​HOUSTON - With all eyes on Houston's struggling office market, it can seem like the city's commercial real estate market has gone bust.

But outside of Houston's urban core, industrial and Port-anchored developments are booming.

Houston's southeast submarket vacancy rate is at roughly 3.4 percent, which is well below the national average of 6.4 percent, said Matteson Hamilton, Houston industrial managing director of Stream Realty Partners LP, citing data from Houston-based CoStar Group's year-end report.​

That low vacancy rate is a "completely new phenomenon" compared to the 20 percent vacancy rate the submarket had during the Great Recession, according to Stream's fourth-quarter industrial report.

The submarket is highly concentrated with petrochemical, manufacturing and logistics companies.

Of the nearly 2.4 million sf of space under construction in the area, 1.3 million has already been preleased, according to the report. But that's not to say landlords aren't facing challenges for leasing space in the submarket.